Correctly rendering transparent surfaces might require sorting many transparent fragments back-to-front or front-to-back for each pixel on the screen. This operation can be very intensive from a computational and memory bandwidth standpoint, and is generally slow and power inefficient. Known methods employ an a priori unbounded amount of memory, which is proportional to the amount of visible transparent fragments on the screen.
Some methods of approximation that do not require sorting transparent fragments are known. These methods are relatively faster and more efficient, but still require an unbounded amount of memory. Additionally, these methods may use two or more rendering passes in order to generate the desired image.
The same numbers are used throughout the disclosure and the figures to reference like components and features. Numbers in the 100 series refer to features originally found in FIG. 1; numbers in the 200 series refer to features originally found in FIG. 2; and so on.